Golden Argosy, Vol. VI No. 23

About this issue

"The Prairie Scourge" by Henry M. Hamilton is the featured story in The Golden Argosy, number 288. It recounts an army surveying expedition into New Mexico during an Apache truce, centered on encounters with wild horses. A trooper is attacked by a rogue stallion and dragged twenty yards before being rescued. When five hundred wild horses stampede toward the camp near the Bonita River, the expedition's own stallion is driven away, leading the narrator and others to pursue. They witness a dramatic two-stallion combat in a valley, where the wild sorrel defeats the domestic horse through superior fighting skill. The climax comes during a midnight thunderstorm when a herd of 1,500 wild horses stampedes through camp. The narrator captures five of the trapped animals with lassos while they're wedged in a wagon V-space. The herd destroys tents, supplies, and kills one man but the expedition recovers all livestock except one mule. Also included: a poem "Spring Within" and Chapter XLI of "Mr. Halgrove's Ward; Living It Down" by Talbot Baines Reed, concerning orphaned children and tenement life.